This invention relates, in general, to shared resource environments, and in particular, to facilitating the transfer of data into host memory within a shared resource environment.
A shared resource environment enables workloads executing within the environment, even those of different customers, to be consolidated on one machine allowing the resources of that machine to be shared.
One example of a shared resource is a shared network interface (e.g., a shared adapter), which facilitates communications with one or more hosts coupled to the shared network interface. The shared network interface facilitates the transfer of data, including large amounts of data, into or out of a host and the host's file system. It also facilitates the streaming of other types of large data, such as video or complex engineering or scientific graphics.
Transferring large amounts of data, whether it be files, streams, or other data, can be very expensive in terms of central processing unit (CPU) cycles and the cost of the network input/output (I/O).